Number 47

Earlier this week I posted some pics of Nick Lane’s wall of clippings. One of the things I pointed out was that the number 47 appears on the wall twice. After some deeper looking, I am finding a pattern of ‘47‘ that may or may not be coincidence.

wall of clippings

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At the beginning of Episode 17 – “Bad Dreams”, in Olivia’s dream, I noticed that the track number was ‘4‘ and the train number was ‘7‘…

track and train

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In Episode 16 – “Unleashed”, the time on the clock was 11:47…

clock

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In Episode 14 – “Ability”, there were 47 lights on both the bomb and the game that Olivia played…

lights

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and the bomb was on the 47th floor…

bomb

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In Episode 1 – “Pilot” and in Episode 13 – “The Transformation”, both of the planes had 147 passengers…

passengers

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In Episode 7 – “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones”, Loeb mentions a page 47 to Broyles, although they don’t show the page, this reminded me of the elusive page 47 from J.J. Abrams’ “Alias”…

Page 47

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This one might be stretching, but in Episode 10 – “Safe”, at the bar, Olivia guesses the card as the ‘4‘ of clubs. The only other time I have seen a deck of cards, was in Episode 17 – “Bad Dreams” on Nick Lane’s dresser, and that card was the ‘7‘ of clubs…

cards

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So, what I’m wondering is…is this a J.J. Abrams thing, or is it a ‘ZFT’ thing? I did a little research on the number ’47’ and here’s what I found.

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– ’47’ is a Keith number – a Keith number or repfigit number (short for repetitive Fibonacci-like digit)

– ’47’ is a prime number – they seem to like prime…prime colors – yellow, red, blue.

– There is also a ‘47 Society‘ who believes that the number 47 is the quintessential random number of the universe.

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There are also a million other things related to the number 47, check it out for yourself at Wikipedia.

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16 thoughts on “Number 47”

In the video at massive-dynamic.org they show a german promo for the show, most of the footage we’ve seen, but not far from the end, someone cuts an apple in half and it has the fetus-seeds as from the glyphs.

oh finally got to see the whole thing! i usually closed the window, there’s something very creepy about how the germans presented the clips..as much as we know and love them they gave me the heebies. but then again allizee isn’t so children-friendly either 😛

how is the apple cutting presented? that’s like a mash-up of episode scenes for what i got to see, did it look out of an episode? maybe a future one?

J.J. Abrams is a huge Star Trek fan. Gene Rodenberry too had a 47 fetish and is referenced in most episodes of Star Trek in one way or another. It has been s number that has gone highly noticed in my life as well. In fact my father was born on 4-7-47 and it too had some strange relevance in his life as well. There isn’t a way to explain it but I too notice in all Fringe episodes. “47 injections”, evidence marker #47 used twice…flight numbers, amount of people….etc.

Actually, the 47 references in Star Trek come from Joe Menosky. He went to Pomona College in the states, which has a special history with the number 47. Essentially the idea is that the number 47 occurs naturally more than any other number. One of their math profs even cooked up a mathematical proof showing that every number in the universe is equal to 47 (the proof apparently used a bit of a cheat, but who’s counting, hehe). Anyway, Menosky turned a lot of the Star Trek folks onto the 47 phenomenon, and it kinda spread from there. I expect Abrams picked it up somewhere along the line from one of the Star Trek folks, and was inspired. After being a fan of Voyager and realizing how often they used 47 in the dialogue or in the background scenery, I was happy to see the 47 phenomenon in Fringe. Good on JJ for keeping up such a long tradition. Here’s a site with some good 47s, wiki also has some on their listing for “47”http://www.47.net/47society/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/47_(number)

I agree with Shawn, JJ definitely has it in all of his creations. It was in EVERY episode of Alias, whether it be a number in an elevator or a page or an address, it was definitely there. Either in the first or second episode of Alias, Marshall makes a comment about techi-fake lipstick tube and says Sydney, “has to get it to 46 clicks” and that he was trying to make it “47 because it’s a prime number.”